http://sandsquid.com - A web app for quickly locating and purchasing electronic parts, specifically entire BOMs (all the components on one or more PCBs, instead of just a single part like other services out there). It's bootstrapped, and we just recently launched. So far we had good traction and virtually all positive responses. Notably, people report that we save them hours every time they use our app, and I firmly believe that any service capable of that, has a place ;)
I was thinking about doing something similar for a bit :).
If I may make a couple of suggestions - I put in 24 ATMEGA328P-PU-ND. It found where they were, it found the lowest price. They're $3.16 PU - total ~$76. If I get one more, 25 of them, I hit the price break, and my order total come to $50. Definitely a better deal. When I'm getting parts, the price breaks always seem to make me spend more, but there's situations where it wouldn't (like above). Adding in recognition for those would be good.
Another suggestion (this is what I was going to work on, but I've moved onto other things) - create a package deal - PCB, parts, stencils, etc, all in one. Have rolling part shipments (orders every Friday). Get reels of components, fulfill some yourself - but charge the live lowest price (you make a little bit from the reel discount, they save a little bit from your utility). You handle the money in between, and disperse it out to the lowest combined cost. Having a one stop shop where I could dump a schematic & board file and get back a PCB, parts, and stencils would be pretty awesome.
As for ATMEGA328P-PU-ND, did you try using the optimization slider? :) Drag it all the way to its "Aggressive" setting, it will bump the quantity up to 25, and the total down to $48 - just like you said.
As for package deals - you are right, this is what needs to be done. We're thinking about that.
Awesome, didn't see that before. Maybe turn it on by default, then have the option to back it off? Why is the quantity bump represented as an error with big warning signs? Shouldn't it be a good thing?
Is there any way to represent shipping as well? That seems like the killer - sure something is $2 cheaper on Mouser than Digikey, but if I have to pay $5 for shipping, that breaks the deal.
Something else that would be cool - and this is a huge pain point for me when developing PCBs, is let me tell you rough characteristics I want, you find me the part. I want a 0805 10K resistor +- 10% @ quantity 100. Find me the cheapest one! As long as I can use it as a pull up resistor, I don't really care what it is. It's a huge pain in the ass to go through when I want to make my BOM and have 10 different tabs open looking for a 1K, 5K, 10K, 22uF, 10uF resistor and caps. Make that part easy.
You should increase the part lookup speed as well - it spins for quite a while. Autocomplete after a few characters would be good too (I wouldn't remember PU-ND, had to look it up, but I can get the first part).
Good stuff - do you have a mailing list or anything to get updates?
There is indeed a mailing list! when you move onto the final step it'll ask you (nicely and once).
The quantity bump gets shown as a warning because at some extremes the optimizing algorithm may choose to increase the overall quantity even if it costs you more than at a lower optimization level. Lets say you picked $100 worth of MCUs, and it knows it can get 30% more MCUs for 10% of additional cost - it may go for it. In such cases we thought the user would like to know.
Unfortunately we have no way to calculate the shipping at present... but the generic parts locator is a great suggestion, we'll do it!
Wow - this is pretty awesome - I just ran a sample BOM and it worked very well. How do you plan to monetize this?
Some feature requests (I m sure you have heard these before):
1) Don't require exact part numbers for common passives (100nF 0603 25V X7R 20%) should get me to say the 10 cheapest results across suppliers.
2) Better information if part numbers are out of stock (Digikey and Mouser both allow you to see projected ship dates) - This also allows for another optimization slider, "Lead time"
